TERRE HAUTE, Ind.—Villanova had a spread of just 43 seconds between its five scoring runners and tallied a 23
rd place finish at the NCAA Championships on Saturday afternoon. Senior
Andrew Marston (Wayne, Pa.) led the Wildcats by coming in 79
th individually at the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course.
The finish in the team standings matched where Villanova placed last season. Marston covered the 10,000 meter course in 31:46.0 and was followed across the finish line by sophomore
Charlie O'Donovan (Cork, Ireland) who came in 124
th with a time of 32:08.7. O'Donovan placed 91 spots higher than where he finished as a freshman at the national meet a year ago.
Redshirt freshman
Haftu Strintzos (Victoria, Australia), senior
Casey Comber (Maple Glen, Pa.) and sophomore
Josh Phillips (Belrose, Australia) were the Wildcats other scoring runners. Strintzos recorded a time of 32:17.2 and was 142
nd overall in his NCAA Championships debut, while Comber covered the course in 32:28.9 and placed 162
nd. Phillips was less than half a second behind him in 164
th place (32:29.2).
Villanova appeared at the national meet for the second straight year and the 34
th time overall. On their road to the championships, the Wildcats won the BIG EAST and NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional titles for the first time in five years. The first place finishes at those meets came despite Villanova needing to methodically build up to full strength throughout the season.
As a result of minor nagging injuries and illnesses at the start of the year, the Wildcats did not have their full team in action for the first time until the BIG EAST Championships earlier this month. The top runners on the squad then raced three times in a four-week span at the conference, regional and national meets with little time for recovery in between.
Rounding out the Villanova lineup at the NCAA Championships were graduate student
Nathan Rodriguez (Tempe, Ariz.) and redshirt freshman
Patrick Spychalski (Mount Pleasant, S.C.). Rodriguez crossed the finish line in 32:53.2 and Spchalski recorded a time of 33:12.5 in his first career race at the national level.
Marston is now a four-year veteran of the NCAA Championships, having qualified as an individual in 2016 and 2017 before helping lead the Wildcats to team berths at the meet in each of the last two seasons. Villanova had a team score of 556 points in Saturday's race and finished five spots ahead of Georgetown, the only other BIG EAST program to qualify for the field of 31 teams.
The individual honors for the Wildcats during the season included all five of the team's scoring runners earning All-BIG EAST and Mid-Atlantic All-Region honors. Marston and Comber each end their collegiate cross country careers as four time first team All-BIG EAST performers as well as all-region honorees.
